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Andrew Hennigan is a Lecturer, Speaker Coach and Writer. He is interested in speaking, writing, social media, networking, influencing, reputation, intercultural, innovation and other topics. He is also a freelance journalist, writer for hire and author of the book Payforward Networking. Copyright Andrew Hennigan 2007-2018.

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In an earlier post Three Tips for Responding to Angry Emails I outlined some practical methods for responding to angry emails effectively. This solves part of the problem but it would be far better if angry emails were never sent in the first place.

There are some people who regularly resort to sending angry emails -- every organization seems to have at least one employee who is part troll -- but even otherwise calm and measured people can slip into this mistake occasionally. And this is a mistake. Sending angry emails can have negative effects that go beyond the obvious.

ANGRY EMAILS ARE NOT EFFECTIVE. A polite and respectful email is much more likely to achieve results than one that is angry and perhaps disrespectful, both in the short term and long term. Other people are always more co-operative with someone who treats them well and they will feel a stronger commitment to your goal when you ask nicely. Remember that at the end of the year when your results are being evaluated and r…

As a freelance journalist I have asked many other people for comments and in my role as consultant I have also been on the other side, so I have learned why some people get contacted just once while others are asked again and again. There are actually just three simple yet important rules to follow.

RESPOND QUICKLY. When you are asked if you are interested in commenting on some topic you should respond as quickly as possible. The journalist is almost certainly working to deadline and needs to talk to a number of sources. Knowing who is interested and who isn't is very important. If you don't respond they don't know if you plan to respond later and maybe have to choose someone else instead. At this stage it is enough to state that you are inter…

When people find out that I teach influencing workshops one of the first questions is sometimes "How do I convince someone to..." as though there is some magic formula to persuade people to do things that they don't want to do. There are, in fact, some manipulative techniques that let you do exactly that, but only for a short time. In the mid and long term the only way to get people to do the things that you want them to do is to influence them, which is very different.

One of the principles of effective influencing is that you should not create an idea in a vacuum then try to convince people to accept it. Instead you should let the people around you help shape the idea until it is in a form that works for you and works for them, then it is accepted willingly.

This is effective because people are naturally reluctant to accept something unfamiliar. You might be familiar with this from the common dislike of new things which are later accepted. Every time there is a new vers…